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Part I of THE TIDE IS TURNING: LABOR DEMAND EXCEEDING SUPPLY showed that supply and demand have struck again, turning the tide from an abundance of labor/workers/professionals for companies to choose from to the new human capital dynamics I forecasted beginning in 2016 in my 2016 Overall Economic Employment Forecast —“retaining/growing nimble employees in a tight […]

How can your company be one of the minority of firms who capture the elusive benefits of successful merger and acquisition (M&A) transactions? Yes, it’s well documented that only a minority of companies actually pull off their M&A deals successfully—just look at these facts: 70% of M&A transactions fail to achieve intended revenue increases […]

The people a firm hires, promotes, and retains are undeniably critical to corporate profitability and success. Reviewing the different approaches available for management to choose from—most of which tout that their system, metric, or methodology is THE BEST and works ALWAYS and in ALL SITUATIONS—made me realize that first thinking about a specific company’s environment […]

Companies exist to make profits. They make those profits through the utilization of the optimal profit-making mixture of labor and equipment that creates a product or service that enough consumers want to purchase—“enough” being all amounts above the creation costs…and the more “enough” the better. One of the benefits of your labor force is that […]

In December 2009, Tracey Keyss, Thomas W. Malnight, and Kees van der Graaf from McKinsey & Company wrote an article entitled “Making the most of corporate social responsibility (CSR),” where they said that “there is no single accepted definition of CSR, which leads to plenty of confusion about what constitutes a CSR activity.” Almost […]

I remember when I was young, like starting my first job young, that I prided myself on looking older than I was…and being very mature for my age to boot. As I look around now at the vast number of adults over 50 years old, it seems like they want to do just the opposite: […]

Goal-induced behavior turns out to have some pretty bad side effects, which dismays me, a life-long goal setter who attributes much of what I’ve achieved to defining a target or goal and then identifying the steps needed to get from here to there. The latest company to turn away from a performance-based—i.e., the ability of […]

Gail MarksJarvis’ 10/12/13 Chicago Tribune article, Why Some Workers Settle for Boring Jobs, shares the very interesting research results of a team of professors from Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business. Bottom line: workers assess whether what they’re doing is commensurate with the pay they’re being given…and will choose a less demanding, less interesting job […]

My partner and I, being avid wordsmiths, subscribe to Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Day. “Per contra” was a recent Word of the Day. This term is of Italian origin and means “by the opposite side (of the ledger).” Included with “per contra” was a brief description of a true Italian Renaissance man, Luca Pacioli (1445-1517), […]

This October 1st starts open enrollment for health care insurance through the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Its impact is huge on jobs, individual health/productivity, and corporate profits/losses. Because ACA unties the binds to any specific insurance company and because few—especially individuals—truly understand the choices they’ll be making in the beginning, it will be musical chairs […]